St. Vincent Takes Control of Her Narrative in ‘The Nowhere Inn’ Trailer

UPDATE 8/12: An extended trailer of The Nowhere Inn has arrived, offering more insight into the dynamic between Carrie Brownstein and St. Vincent (Annie Clark), as the Portlandia star directs a mockumentary on the musician. “You’re nerdy and normal in real life, but the disparity between that and who you are on stage is jarring,” Brownstein tells Clark. “We’re in this together,” Clark later says. “Me and me.”

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The first official trailer for The Nowhere Inn, the mockumentary written by and starring Annie Clark (St. Vincent) and Sleater-Kinney’s Carrie Brownstein, is out now. The film premiered back at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, and will finally open in theaters and on streaming on September 17th.

Presented as a behind-the-scenes concert documentary directed by Brownstein and centered on Clark, The Nowhere Inn takes the depiction of a touring musician to its most psychological extremes, with the filmmaker and the artist’s working relationship slowly unraveling over the course of the shoot.

“I wanted people to know who I really am,” Clark says in an on-camera interview, cut between scenes of Western shootouts and other surreal images. “One of the reasons why I wanted to make a documentary in the first place is I would finally be in control of the narrative. … A small part of me was starting to second-guess myself. All I can say is, somewhere along the way, things went terribly wrong.”

Elsewhere in the trailer, Dakota Johnson makes a cameo appearance as herself, in what appears to be an explicit photoshoot with Clark.

Even though Brownstein portrays the filmmaker in The Nowhere Inn, the movie was actually directed by Bill Benz (Portlandia, At Home With Amy Sedaris) in his feature film debut.